removing clutter programs make computer faster?

whenever I open programs from the start menu, I always find a long list of programs that I'm never going to use. Is there a way to remove these, because I don't think they're all in the program/uninstall menu. For instance, the games folder has a whole bunch of games I never play. There a bunch of windows live programs, and windows media player, and ie. I never use any of these.

How do I delete these programs? and would deleting them make my computer faster?

Note: I especially want to get rid of ie, because I hate it with a passion.

 

I second Indrek.

Also, you can remove/uninstall various programs via Programs and Features - pick and choose those you don't need.
Windows Live programs are sometimes installed extra on your computer and is not part of Windows Features.

Aside from that, keep in mind that numerous programs will install extra services into the OS (even if you may have disabled the program itself from starting up).
You can access this option by typing 'Services' into the Start menu search, clicking on 'Component Services', followed by 'Services (local)'.

Having a lot of services running on your computer can easily choke it along with ones that take up plenty of resources - clean install of Windows 7 has around 40-42 services - so, you can set services of programs you use on your own time to 'Manual' (this will prevent them loading with the OS) - make sure to know which ones they are in order to avoid disabling something OS related.
With MSE, my services number is at 45 (I set those from programs I have installed to Manual because I noticed that some were slowing down my startup times).

 

Apart from what's been mentioned above, you can turn off program's from starting up using "msconfig".

And while playing with "Services", please advise caution. Do NOT disable services you aren't sure what they are about.

This is a good place to start / follow:

Black Viper’s Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Service Configurations | Black Viper | www.blackviper.com

Go with the "Safe" settings first and see how it is and of course, you can read about the different services. Have fun!

Cheers..

 

For the most part, extraneous services only effect the boot time and even then only marginally. Services are only running when they are called upon to do so, so there is no real CPU impact to having extra ones. The memory mangement of Win7, will page them out if they are not being used, so the memory impact is also marginal.

Now that is not to say that there are ill behaved services that violate both of the above. But the point is, don't expect any large imprvements when dealing with services.

Gary

 

Here are my top 10 speed tips that I commonly tell others about to speed up their PC.

Tip #1 - Enable AHCI Mode

How it works: AHCI optimizes the order of read/write commands through a process called Native Command Queuing. By reducing the frequency of read/writes to the drive head, Windows can load faster because the required files are accessed in a more efficient manner.

Tip #2: Enable Readyboost

How it works: Readyboost caches most commonly used data to your flash drive. This can be very useful for random read operations, especially during startup. Readyboot, a subset of Readyboost performs time-based prefetching which monitors the boot process and learns when it should fetch data into memory. This process helps speed up the loading process because the user does not have to wait during the logon screen for these processes to load. They are already cached and as a result, the desktop appears faster.

Tip #3: Perform Boot Optimization

How it works: Boot Optimization is a subset of the disk defrag utility in Windows. It works by reordering your boot files during the boot process. This process reduces the number of seek & access time of your drive to load the required boot files. Since your
hard drive has to spin less to accomplish the same workload, the system boot time is decreased.

In command prompt:

sc start defragsvc
rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
defrag C: /b

Tip #4: Optimize CPU Utilization

How it works: The default power scheme in Windows is set to balanced. The balanced power scheme restricts the potential of your CPU by throttling X amount of CPU usage when an application is loaded. On Nehalem and Sandy Bridge-based processors it disables Turbo Boost. Unleashing the CPU processor state also improve FPS when gaming. I performed the "Dark Tower" benchmark in Just Cause 2. Under balanced
power scheme, I averaged 21.64 FPS. When switching to High Performance, which does not restrict your CPU I averaged 26.01 FPS, a 4 FPS boost. In Windows Server, make sure the processor scheduling is set to adjust best performance to Programs instead of Background Services. We plan to use this OS as a workstation and thus foreground is more of a priority than the background.


Tip #5: Disable unwanted services/startup items with MSCONFIG

How it works: Each process or application that has to be loaded into memory especially during startup takes time. The more items you have loading during the boot process, the longer it will take for your desktop to be ready. Disabling services does not necessarily
provide a tangible gain in boot time performance per say, rather you benefit significantly in shutdown time because less services are required to shutdown in order for the system to shutdown.

Tip #6: Speed up the shutdown process further

How it works: By restricting the amount of time Windows waits until it kills running tasks, you can decrease the amount of time required for the system to shutdown.

Research "Waittokillservicetimeout" on google to see how to do this.

Tip #7: Choose your Antivirus wisely

How it works: Some antivirus software can cause an abrupt delay in boot time as all the required modules for that AV need to be loaded. A few commonly used antivirus software that have been known to cause slow boot times include AVG, Avast, and especially Avira. Choosing what security software you decide to run will impact the allocation of resources during the startup process. Most common desktop users rate the
performance of their machine based on how fast something loads. If it used to take you 35 seconds to turn your machine on to access the desktop, but now it takes 45 seconds, your impression is that the machine is slower, when in fact it is not slower, you have just told it to load more modules as a result of you switching AV software.

Tip #8: Delay services on startup

How it works: Some applications that install on your machine also install services in support of that program. Unfortunately these services can hang your machine before the desktop is loaded. One service in particular I can think of that loves to hang Windows is the Windows Live ID service. By delaying the startup of this service, the desktop was able to load 5 seconds quicker on my machine. You can also use this trick to delay the services of other applications, for example some antivirus software. This trick works especially well on AVG.

Tip #9: Identify Which Applications Are Hanging Your Computer

How it works: Soluto is an anti-frustration software which records how long each application or service takes to load on your machine. If you are wondering why your boot time used to be great, but now it is suddenly bad, this application can tell you which service or program is consuming most of that boot time. For example, I used soluto to discover that the Windows Live ID assistant service was hanging my boot time for an additional 5 seconds.

Tip #10: Disable Any Hardware Drivers That Are Not Using

How it works: When your computer boots, Windows has to load the device software for all your hardware so that Windows can use them when the desktop appears. By disabling hardware that you are not currently planning to use, less drivers are required to be loaded by Windows and as a result you can shave a second or two off your boot time.

 

From what I've read, this is unnecessary in Windows 7. Windows 7 does this automatically every few days. Doing it manually as you suggested won't do any harm, but won't provide any benefit since Windows already does it.

 

That totally depends on your usage pattern. For many laptop users it will never happen automatically. See the link in my signature line below for details.

Gary

 

Which of those tips apply to an ssd?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2

 

So far, everything that has been suggested that doesn't involve defragmentation could be applied to Windows running on a SSD. You don't want to defrag a SSD.

 

Yeah but I thought readyboost was pretty much useless with an ssd because the ssd is already faster than the flash drive

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2

 

When it comes to services, I personally recommend to simply keep them in check... as in, to monitor from time to time that programs didn't add new ones to the OS startup and simply maintain the number of services they had at clean install with base protection (AV).
I've encountered seemingly benign services that essentially reduced my boot times.
Even if services are relatively marginal in terms of impact, if you have loads of them, it can easily add up.
Most noted example is the bloatware that laptop manufacturers love to put onto the computer... usually doubling (at minimum) the amount of services in the OS at startup.
Once the programs have been completely removed (not just prevented from loading at startup) or their services set to manual activation (and prevented the programs themselves from starting up), the OS was behaving a lot better.

So there is at the very least a definitive correlation between the events... but I digress... correlation is not proof of causation, so that end, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

I agree, but the point I was making is that MOST unused/unneeded (note the emphasis) services really only affect boot time since they get paged out pretty quickly when their memory is needed and don't eat any CPU time at all unless called. And since I reboot my machine almost never (I sleep or hibernate and only reboot during Windows Update cycles), the only ones I worry about are the ones that I don't need that do get called and eat into the CPU. The rest I just ignore, I'd spend more time getting rid of them than the impact they'd have on me.

Gary

 

@ScuderiaConchiglia

Correct. The whole idea of this prefetch/superfetch/readyboost concept is for Microsoft to use ballistics techniques to find out what the user does on a consistent basis. And by ballistics I don't mean what most people think, I am talking merely about usage pattern performed by the user on a daily basis. Problem is I don't think this software is nearly as smart as it thinks because we don't always do the same exact pattern everyday on our computer. I have also noticed that on some machines boot time defragmentation was already performed (as indicated by the LastDiskLayoutTimeString value in the registry) while on others it was never performed. I believe the usage pattern has a lot to do with it like you say.

@Ferrari353

The biggest advantage of enabling AHCI on SSDs is faster sequential read speed, which is especially noticeable during boot time. On my laptop with 32GB SSD as my OS drive, boot time was decreased by a solid 5 seconds.

As per disabling services, the computer will start up roughly the same time regardless of whether you have 35 services on or 70 services...for an SSD the biggest benefit to this is clearly the shutdown time. On some SSDs, the shutdown time sucks and this tweak really helps to speed that up.

Optimizing the CPU utilization helps any computer SSD or not, but be aware that while application performance is improved, battery life is depleted. If don't do much to even stress your CPU or graphics card, then it would probably be best to leave the power scheme at the preferred balanced plan anyways, saving you precious battery life (if you care at all).

 

Actually what I meant (and should have explicitly said) was that the typical useage pattern of most laptop users will prevent the defrag from ever running. The usage pattern I am referring to is that the laptops are never allowed to sit idle for any period of time. When the aren't in use they are off, or in sleep or hibernate modes. And the auto defrag only occurs if the machine is allowed to sit idle for a specific amount of time.

Gary

 

Anyone else ever use Soluto? Never have heard of this before and would like any opinions.

 

Tried it before. On a well-maintained computer, it's not going to net you any results. Does display the collected data in a pretty neat way, though.